So long as I can write it off my taxes....'marketing meeting expense'.

I'll post up more pics of the hardscape later on. Unfortunitely I did not get to do them because it was part of the deal with the pool guy. Big masonry jobs are always at my finger tips it seems but not in hand. Its okay though, I'm busy with planting after planting and Bobcat work. I'm hiring a mason/foreman this spring...hopefully he's out of the hospital/rehab by then.....road side bomb rattled his cage a bit. Sargent as a foreman.......I like the sound of that.....MOVE MOVE MOVE

TThomas: Check out the latest lawn and landscape magazine. Your truck is pictured off-loading the T-190 and bed into someones driveway. Positive it's yours and is pictured in the ampliroll ad. I will get the page #'s for the magazine this week.

Obviously on something that big you cannot take the basket off and then expect to be able to lift it into the hole. the root ball will fall apart. but once in the hole. you can snip off as low as you can reach into the hole, remember the hole is twice as wide as the root ball so it should be easy to get an arm down there. Then snip the basket on the side so you can remove a majority of the basket from around the roots. I wasn't going to bust shops, but that hole for the Crepe should be a bit bigger. But since it looks like its all new soil brought in, rather than the crap clay normal to Northern VA it should be OK. But I would have pulled the burlap and basket off.

Once the basket is removed, a knife, scissors, or pruners can be used to cut away the burlap, or you could unroll the the burlap and fold it down into the newly dug hole to expose the ends of the roots so you get good root/soil contact, rather than waiting for the burlap to breakdown as the roots try to force their way through the burlap into the new soil around the root ball.

I cut around the top as pictured. Should aplant that size die it would be a b*tch to remove without the basket to lift by. Baskets are also made with larger openings now then before so to enable them to grow with the basket. It doesn't confine the roots vs a basket with smaller openings.

I completely agree w/ removing the burlap from the top of the rootball, but once you get the tree situated in the hole straight by tamping dirt in the hole there is only so much wire basket you can cut off. I never cut any of the wire basket off of my bnbs, just bend the ears back and cut the top burlap off... the tree farms I buy from say you do not need to cut the baskets off. I don't really see how they could confine the roots that much.